


rarely pure and never simple

by refusals



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Brainwashing, Community: avengerkink, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Torture, Manipulation, Poor Bucky, SO MUCH MANIPULATION
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-06
Updated: 2014-05-06
Packaged: 2018-01-23 19:35:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1577057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/refusals/pseuds/refusals
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four times Alexander Pierce talked the Winter Soldier down from the proverbial edge and one time he threw him right over it.</p><p>Fill for avengerkink, full prompt and warnings listed inside.</p>
            </blockquote>





	rarely pure and never simple

**Author's Note:**

> written for [this avengerkink prompt](http://avengerkink.livejournal.com/19023.html?thread=43831887#t43831887).
> 
> additional warnings not included in the tags: dehumanisation, non-graphic violence, physical and emotional abuse, brief non-graphic self-harm, off-screen death of a child, hints of stockholm syndrome, references to suicidal ideation.
> 
> the timeline of this story is left vague, but it is to be assumed all events took place before cap was even defrosted, and the first scene does not necessarily happen right after bucky was found (mostly just because this would make pierce really old. oops).
> 
> title belongs to oscar wilde: "the truth is rarely pure and never simple."

 

> _i._

He wakes up missing a part of his body and all of his mind.  
  
Every muscle, every synapse, every cell immediately fires into overdrive to compensate for the difference. Despite the missing limb and his body’s lopsided centre of balance, he manages to take down two scientists and swipe the syringe from the nearby doctor who was no doubt about to pump him full of sedatives.  
  
It is a thing of beauty, really, Pierce thinks to himself as he watches the chaotic scene unfold with the sad appreciation with which one might survey the last animal of a soon-to-be extinct species – a magnificent but ultimately doomed creature whose appeal lies uniquely in its tragedy. This boy, running purely on a mix of adrenaline and lethal muscle memory in a broken body that shouldn’t even be able to stay upright let alone put up a proper struggle. This boy, with the gleaming terror of a prey animal reflected in the whites of his eyes, driven by base survival instinct to fight for his life despite having no idea what that life entails or who the person living it is.  
  
Pierce, on the other hand, has a vague idea. The subject had been a favourite of Zola’s during the War, and the data collected from that time gave Pierce a bit to work with in terms of weaknesses, vulnerabilities, exploitable character traits. It painted a picture of a reckless, loyal boy, equal parts cocky and deeply unsure of himself, his worldview tilted by a wry cynicism. All seemingly petty tidbits of personality, but to someone like Pierce who can spot even the slightest crack in any diamond, it has been more than enough. The subject may as well have been emblazoned with fluorescent chalk markings like those at a construction site indicating where to dig and how deep.  
  
The stuttering mechanical chorus of half a dozen assault rifles being raised draws Pierce from his reverie. He raises a hand to stop anyone from doing anything stupid.  
  
“Stand down,” he commands, eyes not moving from the subject, who is no longer attacking anyone outright.  Instead, he has adopted a tense, defensive stance, warily taking in his surroundings as he brandishes the syringe like a knife at anyone who tries to approach him.  
  
The surrounding guards reluctantly lower their weapons, and Pierce steps past their protective circle despite their protests, eventually coming to stand face to face with the subject.  
  
He has the body and the bloodthirst of a grown man, but looks awfully young from this close up, his face all sleek lines and fine angles, eyes a blurry, bewildered blue and lips like a wet pink flower. He’s gasping for breath, body beginning to shake, the adrenaline wearing off and the exertion of the struggle finally catching up to his over-taxed system.   
  
Pierce was ready for this; he’d brought a glass of water to the room with him in case he needed to play the Good Cop.  He offers it to the subject with a harmless smile but is not surprised when the action is merely met with a suspicious glare.  
  
“Who... am I?” the subject asks thickly, sounding like his mouth is full of moss.  
  
“That doesn’t matter anymore,” Pierce replies. “Whoever you were, it is not who you were meant to be.”  
  
Confusion clouds the subject’s face.  
  
“The world has been waiting a very long time for someone like you,” Pierce continues, almost reverently. “You were put here for a purpose. We brought you in from the cold because we know you’re meant for great things. You’re going to change the world, kid. You are its salvation.”

He lets that stew in the subject’s mind for a bit before he gives a curt nod to the remaining uninjured orderlies. They approach the subject with understandable hesitation, but he pays no attention to them at all. He drops the syringe the moment they put their hands on him to guide him back to the chair, his body slack, eyes staring straight ahead, past them, past Pierce, past the mildew settled in the cracks of the tiled walls, and into some far-off or perhaps not-so-distant future where he is useful, acknowledged, brave.

 

* * *

 

  
_(he is afraid of the man in the suit but the worst nights are the ones when the man in the suit isn’t there.  
  
those are the nights when they do not let him sleep, when the lights in his room are kept blindingly bright for days and even if he curls up on the ground with his head tucked beneath his arms to try to block out the glare, there’s still the music, the bass beat that thrums in his chest and makes his ribcage rattle, the abrasive vocals that grind his pulse to dust. there are other voices, too. real ones. yelling at him in a language he didn’t realise he understood; they berate him for things he does not remember doing, or perhaps they are berating him for not having done them when he should have – he can’t tell anymore, he doesn’t know what he did or didn’t or should or shouldn’t or how or when or what why  _ who _—  
  
but even all that is not as bad as when they make him disappear. they ignore him for days. he begs for water, for food; the guards stare past him and do not even so much as twitch. he has dreams of ice and trains and wonders if maybe he is actually dead. a ghost on earth, or a soul in hell. that would explain why nobody can see him. he smashes his face into the wall, watches the mask of blood it leaves on the stone, uses that as proof that he exists he exists he exists _ i exist! _he tells anyone who will listen, which is no one.  
  
then the man in the suit is there. the man brings him back. the man is merciful, and kind.)_

 

   

 

> _ii._

Their first mistake is letting him stay awake.  
  
A mere ten days on ice doesn’t seem worth the hassle of having to undergo another tiresome post-freeze revitalization process, so for the time between his successful mission in Paris – an Algerian diplomat who ostensibly drowned after having passed out drunk in the bathtub of a posh hotel room – and an upcoming assignment in Madripoor, the Soldier is merely kept on lockdown in a HYDRA safehouse off the coast of Singapore.   
  
The Soldier’s first mistake is letting them know he remembers.  
  
The cracks in his programming begin to show after only the first few days. He pads around his cell with all the tense confusion of a newly captive animal, his entire body one bunched, coiled muscle. He sleeps fitfully, and only for a couple of hours at a time, becoming more and more disoriented as the days go on, but even in his clumsy state, no doctor can get close enough to him to sedate him, let alone wrestle him back into the chair or the stasis chamber. Pierce is eventually summoned to the safehouse after the guards witness the increasingly distressed Soldier spend eight straight hours pacing back and forth, pulling his hair out and muttering indiscernably under his breath.  
  
Pierce enters the room alone and unarmed, his poised demeanor and immaculate outfit appearing jarringly out of place in this dank cellar that stinks of urine and sweat, clumps of hair strewn around the floor. The occupant of the cell is the one more suited to the surroundings, what with his filthy clothes, gaunt, unshaven face, and the nervous twitch that he can’t seem to keep out of his flesh and bone hand.  
  
Whoever let the asset deteriorate to this point so soon before a mission is definitely fired, Pierce thinks. These conditions would certainly be acceptable if the weapon were inactive, but he needs to be kept in peak physical shape ahead of an assignment.  
  
Pierce asks, “Is there a problem?”  
  
The Soldier abruptly halts in his tracks and simply announces, “I'm late.”  
  
Pierce has no idea where this is going but decides to humour him for the time being. “Late for what?”  
  
“It’s... an Expo...? In New York.” He glances wildly around the room before asking, “Are we in New York?”  
  
If Pierce’s disposition changes ever so slightly – eyes sharpening into a ruthless focus and the line of his lips tightening into something more of a threat – the Soldier is too upset to take notice of it. His obliviousness is further worrying evidence of his unravelling. Pierce starts to think maybe things are worse than he’d thought. He makes a note to tell the doctors that the asset shall no longer go more than a couple of days out of cryofreeze unless he is also being regularly subjected to mental implantation exercises.  
  
“You are mistaken,” Pierce says firmly. “You have no mission in New York. Your mission is in Hightown, Madripoor, and not for another two days. You are right where you belong.”  
  
The Soldier’s brow furrows in concentration and his breathing quickens, as if exercising this part of his brain is causing him actual physical discomfort, much like an atrophied muscle being pushed beyond its limits. Who knows, Pierce muses, it could very well be the case, thanks to the brilliant work of HYDRA's Department X.  
  
“No,” the Soldier insists, a bit hysterical now, and Pierce bristles at this rare demonstration of outright defiance. “I think there's—”  
  
“Ah ah ah,” Pierce admonishes with a wag of his index finger, and the Soldier still has enough conditioning left in him to look reprimanded.

“There’s somewhere I gotta be,” the Soldier says, careful to omit the previous suggestion of independent thought. “There’s somewhere... Wait. No.” He pauses, nervously licks his lips, and corrects himself: “Some _one._ ”  
  
Pierce heaves a grim sigh. This is exactly the scenario he had been fearing. Though the Soldier had exhibited no recollection of his past life when he was first revived, there was no telling what memories might come creeping back the longer he was awake, like circulation returning in a frostbitten limb. And of course what stronger connection to his past self would the Soldier have than  _him_. If the Soldier was cold flesh dying from frostbite, then the Captain would be the blood that could return to him warmth and life and as such, the Captain must be drained from the Soldier completely.  
  
Pierce can hardly keep from curling his lips in contempt; even in _death_ , Steve fucking Rogers still manages to be a threat to HYDRA.  
  
“There’s someone I need to meet,” the Soldier is still mumbling. “They might... They might be wondering where I am. They might be... worried... about me...” He trails off with a perplexed uncertainty towards the end of his sentence, a hesitation that Pierce immediately pounces on.  
  
“ _Worried_  about you?” he echoes with an exaggerated incredulity that clearly demonstrates how preposterous a statement he finds this to be. “Why would  _anyone_ ever be worried about  _you?”_  
  
The Soldier flushes with shame and appears to become even more agitated by the question, or perhaps by the fact that he can’t seem to answer it.  
  
“I don’t _know_ ,” he says helplessly, a childlike frustration edging into his voice. “I think... he’s a friend.” He blinks furiously a few times then reiterates with slightly more confidence, “I had a friend.”  
  
Pierce makes a disappointed sound in his throat, like a parent looking at a report card full of C’s, and the effect on the Soldier is immediate: whatever assertiveness he might have had dissolves into humiliation and he seems to hunch in on himself in submission.  
  
“A friend,” Pierce repeats with a condescending chuckle. “Well, if this person is such a good...  _friend..._  Then where is he now?”  
  
The Soldier draws a sharp, quivering breath, and Pierce knows his blow has landed exactly where it was meant to.  
  
“I- I don’t know,” the Soldier whispers, wide-eyed with hurt bewilderment.  
  
“Whoever this ‘friend’ is,” Pierce continues idly, “You clearly did not know him as well as you thought.”  
  
Everything from the Soldier’s defeated body language to the devastation on his face tells Pierce that the situation has effectively been dealt with, but he’s not finished just yet, having spotted an opportunity in this exchange that he could use to further drive a wedge between the Winter Soldier and Captain America.   
  
“You know what I think?” he says conversationally, then continues speaking without waiting for an answer because he knows he won’t get one. “I think he – your ‘friend’ – was jealous of you.”  
  
This seems to catch the Soldier’s attention and he lifts his head to look Pierce in the eye once more.  
  
“Jealous?” he rasps out, sounding small and confused, like he can’t imagine how anyone could possibly find anything about him that is desirable enough to be jealous about.  
  
Pierce nods. “He saw your potential. Just like I did. But unlike me, he felt threatened by it. Maybe he even resented you for it. At the very least, he would have tried to suppress it. Deny its existence, especially to you, because he knew that if you found out about it... then what would become of him? He’d be nobody. But we’re not like him, you see. We  _want_  you to reach your full potential. You are going to change the world, remember? But we can’t help you shape the future if you won't let go of your past.”

The Soldier’s face has gone blank now. He gives a slow nod, eyes dull with a resigned understanding. Pierce watches this transformation carefully, and not without a certain sense of awe. Even after all the work he’s done with the asset, he is still astounded by just how quickly and easily a person can be made to disappear.  
  
“Come now,” he beckons to the Soldier. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”  
  
The Soldier nods again. He lets Pierce grip him a little too roughly on the shoulder as he leads him out of the cell to another room where the chair is waiting, promising relief.

 

* * *

  
  
_(his body remembers more than his mind, but trying to take the leftover echo of fingertips on his skin or the residual warmth of another body against his own and match them to a specific person or event is like attempting to sync up an audio track to the wrong visual. no matter how hard he tries, nothing falls properly into place.  
  
so he resolves to exist in body only, where things are simple and tidy and quiet. where there is none of the chaotic dissonance that erupts within his skull whenever he tries to reconcile two incongruous parts of himself. and if existing in body means that his world consists of nothing but different shades of pain, then so be it. it’s not like existing in mind would be any different.  
  
besides, the body pain, he can handle. from the brilliant blue of an electric current to the soft neutrals of a boot to his gut, it operates on a predictable spectrum, completely unlike the untameable kaleidoscopic agony of a fractured psyche.  
  
when he is not spinning on the colour wheel of hurts and aches, his default setting is the black gulp of deep screamless space.  
  
there, the man in the suit is the north star. the only constant besides pain. and so, the soldier readily confines himself to the darkness, just to be able to see that one light.)_

  

 

 

> _iii._

“Mission report,” Pierce says, unable to keep the utter disinterest out of his voice. The Yankees game started fifteen minutes ago and the last thing he wants to be doing right now is listening to what may as well be an automated message coming from the lips of what may as well be an automated man. The report is always the same because the mission’s outcome is always the same: the Soldier does his job and the target is eliminated.   
  
But apparently there’s a first time for everything, because the Soldier glances up at him from where he’s sitting in the chair and he says quietly, “You didn’t tell me he had a daughter.”  
  
Pierce stares at him, genuinely befuddled. “Excuse me?”  
  
Without warning, the Soldier’s metal arm lashes out, sending a tray of medical instruments clattering to the floor and the guns of every guard pointed to his head.  
  
Pierce does not flinch. He keeps his hand raised to tell them to hold their fire. He’s curious now, the Yankees game all but forgotten. The Soldier’s memories returning was one thing, perhaps an inevitable one, but this? A sudden manifestation of empathy? Very interesting.  
  
Pierce had read the files on Barnes, James Buchanan, documenting his time with the 107th before and after his capture. Barnes had amassed quite the high kill count before he 'died,' often staying true to the sniper’s MO – quick, clean, impersonal. Pierce wonders if killing ever became a little too easy for Barnes. He wonders if Barnes was ever frightened by his own growing sense of detachment; the way he no longer tortured himself trying to imagine what kind of person his victim might have been before the war.  Perhaps he stopped seeing them as people at all, considering how much distance there always was between them.  
  
There’s nothing like having bits of someone else’s insides spattered on your outsides to remind you that taking the life of another human being is a messy, traumatic affair to be avoided whenever possible.  
  
Perhaps the absence of that reminder led Barnes to slowly start to forget the value of a human life, thus helpfully paving the way for the birth of the Winter Soldier.

However, the present circumstances seem to suggest that he did not fully forget after all.

Nobody has moved since the Soldier's little outburst, not the guards, not the orderlies, not Pierce.  Even the Soldier himself is frozen in place in an awkward position – straddling the chair with one leg on the seat and one foot on the ground, like he was in the process of getting off it but forgot how to do so halfway through.  
  
“Get back into the chair,” Pierce commands, not even needing to sound angry as the perfect evenness of his voice is a threat in and of itself.  
  
The Soldier slowly lifts himself back into the seat, defeated, but still repeats, “The target had a daughter.”  
  
His voice has taken on an almost accusatory bite that Pierce would not have thought him capable of, and it infuriates him; he will not be made to feel morally inferior to a killing machine, will not have his character questioned by a goddamn  _animal._  
  
He gives a careless shrug that conceals just how attentively he is now watching the Soldier and replies, “Okay, so he had a daughter. Fine. How did you proceed?”  
  
The soldier flinches visibly, even starts to tremble, before he manages to say, “The target was eliminated as per protocol.”  
  
“Collateral damage?” Pierce inquires.  
  
“One casualty,” the Soldier whispers, looking haunted.  
  
“Perfectly acceptable losses,” Pierce declares heartily. “Exceeding expectations, actually.”

The Soldier clearly does not share Pierce’s optimistic view, but neither does he break down into the quivering guilt-ridden wreck that Pierce had been bracing himself for. Instead, he simply sits there with a look of vague panic drawn across his face, like he’s being put on the spot with a tricky interview question that his publicists hadn’t prepared him for.  
  
“She was... young,” he murmurs after a moment, as if this is an important piece of data that will help him figure out how to feel about the situation. He is like a lawyer presenting his evidence but who does not know if he’s the prosecution or the defence.  
  
It’s a habit that Pierce has often observed in the asset – when faced with his utter inability to draw his own conclusions, he will state the relevant facts out loud, then wait for someone else’s reaction to serve as the basis for his own. Pierce does not know if this is the result of a conscious effort by HYDRA’s programming team, but it certainly makes his own job a hell of a lot easier when the subject is constantly voicing his thoughts out loud then waiting for them to be confirmed or denied.  
  
Sure enough, the Soldier looks over to Pierce for his response, a mere flickering of those dead underwater eyes that he is perhaps not even aware of.

Pierce, on the other hand, is very, _very_ aware.  
  
“Youth is neither a defence nor an excuse,” he states frostily after a terse silence.  
  
“I could have waited for a better shot,” the Soldier insists weakly, sounding like he’s trying to convince himself more than anyone else, but it’s a halfhearted attempt that falls flat.  
  
Pierce can’t imagine what reason the Soldier might have for wanting to have taken a different shot when this one had obviously done well to produce the desired outcome, but he still points out, “Even if a better shot had indeed presented itself, you might not have been able to make it.”  
  
An uncharacteristic glint of something that is almost anger goes off like a solar flare in the Soldier’s eyes. Pierce realises that it is because the Soldier is  _offended_ , and he has to suppress a fond chuckle at the thought of the asset feeling affronted by someone expressing doubts about his competence and capabilities.  
  
Pierce's appreciation for the clinical beauty of a mindless machine does not mean he is not also drawn to the flipside of things. He remembers his father’s stories, the old black and white reels of the Howling Commandos that he used to watch almost obsessively. There was something about Bucky Barnes that set him apart from all the others – most importantly, from Captain America. Steve Rogers was the golden hero that everyone wanted to be, but Pierce was more interested in the one who had been to hell and back, the one who lived like life was a dare, whose smile was all challenge and bared teeth.  
  
It’s almost a shame that that spark had to have been beaten, starved and electrocuted out of him for him to be of any use at all, like the most majestic of tigers being reduced to a mindless circus trick.  
  
“I shot them,” the Soldier says suddenly, causing Pierce to raise an eyebrow not only because there was supposed to be only one target, but also because the Soldier never words his mission reports in such a personal way. He usually never mentions himself at all. It’s always just  _target was eliminated with prejudice_  or _witnesses were dealt with appropriately_  or  _reached extraction point undetected._  
  
“Them?”

“The daughter, too,” the Soldier clarifies. “She was... In the way.”  
  
The last few words seem to stick hoarsely in the Soldier’s throat but it’s the stricken look expanding in those too-wide too-blue eyes that lets Pierce know the situation is bordering on becoming critical and must be defused swiftly.  
  
“The coward was probably using her as a human shield,” he says, which is a complete lie seeing as the target would not have known he was under threat in the first place.  
  
Meanwhile, the Soldier’s face has tightened into a deeply concentrating frown as he tries to make sense of Pierce’s words and if they offer any clues that will help him decide how he's supposed to feel.  
  
“He thought you would not shoot him through the body of a child,” Pierce explains, ignoring the horrified keening that squeezes itself out from between the Soldier’s lips. “He thought you  _weak-_ ” Pierce spits out the word with such utter contempt that the Soldier visibly shudders, having been taught and taught and taught again that weakness is the worst possible thing a soldier can exhibit, and it always results in the sin of the highest order – failure.  
  
Pierce notices the change in the Soldier’s posture and realises that the Soldier thinks he is going to be punished.  
  
As amusing as that would be, Pierce decides instead to break him with kindness.  
  
“This was a test,” he tells the Soldier, who relaxes ever so slightly once it becomes clear that no one is going to hit him. “Not every job will be easy. Sometimes you will be forced to make difficult decisions.”  
  
The Soldier’s head snaps towards Pierce at that last word, eyes bright with a fearful astonishment.   
  
“Decisions,” he echoes, sounding dumbfounded, mouth clumsy around the word like he’s speaking a dead language.  
  
“You made the right call,” Pierce commends him. “You did what you had to do.”  
  
He knows he’s playing a delicate game here – praising the Soldier’s actions implies that some kind of choice had been made, and the last thing they want is for the Soldier to start believing this is a luxury he is allowed unrestricted access to. Pierce knows that one of the best ways to get someone to do something for you is to make them believe it’s something  _they_  want to do, so he has to give the Soldier enough of an illusion of control to convince him he’s following his own will, but not so much that he starts  _actually_  doing so.  
  
“You did what you had to do,” Pierce repeats. “And one day you might have to do it again. You cannot allow yourself to be manipulated by petty sentiment. It may seem harsh - heartless, even - but that is what sets us apart from the rest, is it not?”  
  
The Soldier gives a miserable nod.  
  
“We understand the sacrifices that need to be made in order to secure a better future,” Pierce goes on. “Remember what I told you about building something new?”  
  
“You have to be willing to get your hands dirty,” the Soldier recites tonelessly.  
  
Pierce nods approvingly and says, “You did well today.  You have made us proud."

The way the Soldier becomes visibly overwhelmed even just from these insincere words of praise is a sad testament to how extremely rare it is for him to be spoken to in this way.  He gazes reverently up at Pierce, who decides to further secure his own status as demigod as far as the Soldier is concerned by laying a gentle hand on the Soldier's flesh shoulder, knowing exactly the kind of effect it will have on that used-up, touch-starved body that no one else ever dares lay a finger on.

Sure enough, the Soldier angles himself several degrees into the touch, and maybe it’s the involuntary wilt of a body too exhausted to hold itself up any longer, or maybe it’s something a little less spontaneous and a lot more sinister.

 

* * *

 

  
_(he has forgotten what other bodies feel like when they are not dead weight slumping towards him on the end of his knife or writhing beneath him fighting to pry his hands from their throat. he knows a ghost like him is not supposed to exist to other people, but sometimes he cannot help but to crave a wall he does not float through, a weight that will press right back against him instead of giving way in a flurry of arterial blood and tidily snapped bone.  
  
but he knows that monsters like him are not meant for such pleasures, so being the adaptable creature that he is, he makes do with what he has. the possessive grip of leather around his wrists whispering promises to never let him go. the soft shroud of frost that waits for him at night like a faithful lover.  
  
the man in the suit touches him with the same tenderness with which he cleans his guns.)_

   

 

 

> _iv._

The Soldier always emerges from cryofreeze like a dollar bill that had been run through the wash. Soggy and pliant, as well as disoriented, terrified, and lacking any muscle control whatsoever.  It is generally unpleasant to witness, so Pierce prefers to avoid doing so whenever possible.  
  
Today, apparently it is  _not_  possible.  
  
A disconcerted doctor bursts unceremoniously into his office, babbling something about a malfunction. Pierce heaves a long-suffering sigh, like a parent who’s received one too many calls from the school principal about their unruly child. Nevertheless, he follows the doctor down to the basement, to the recovery room.  
  
The asset has somehow gotten down from the cold operating table on which he usually remains until he no longer has the consistency of a jellyfish.  He's currently hunched in on himself on the ground, head slung low, knees folded so his legs are splayed out beneath him and his upper body weight thrown forward onto his sweat-slickened arms that shake as they struggle to support him. Oddly enough, the wet, rapid shudder of his breathing sounds more like a death rattle than the grateful gasping of a body coming back to life.  
  
Pierce takes several steps forward until the Soldier’s pitiful form is in his shadow. The Soldier does not react.  
  
“Look at me,” Pierce finally demands.  
  
The Soldier’s head snaps up to obey, but the movement sends him sprawling sideways, where he gives up on trying to stay upright and merely remains curled up on the ground, all while still maintaining eye contact with Pierce. It’s a truly pathetic sight, the utter imbalance of power made so viciously, markedly clear, and Pierce will not deny the thrill he receives from having something so ostensibly deadly - something that could kill him in a hundred and forty-two different ways using only the objects in this room - laying utterly at his mercy at his feet.  
  
Witnessing the Soldier's helplessness apparently emboldens the doctor as well, because he too steps towards the Soldier and barks out, “Tell the Director what you told me.”  
  
The Soldier’s teeth are chattering, either from pain or cold or fear, but likely a combination of all three, and he murmurs something unintelligible.  
  
Pierce gives an exasperated huff before he raises his foot and rests the sole of a perfectly buffed Hugo Boss shoe on the asset’s neck, applying just enough pressure to elicit a strangled whimper, yet the Soldier makes no move to either shove the foot away or roll out from under it.  
  
“Repeat yourself,” Pierce says, toying with how much of his weight he leans on the Soldier’s throat.  
  
The Soldier's voice is small and weak but the words are enunciated surprisingly clearly when he says, “I told him... I don’t want to do this anymore.”  
  
Pierce turns to glare at the doctor, who cringes as it occurs to him that _he_ will likely be the one held responsible for the failures in the Soldier’s programming.  
  
(And he is, once Pierce learns that the doctor had been too lazy to perform the routine pre-cryo memory wipe after the last mission - he had merely put the asset back into stasis with his mind untouched, assuming that the cold would do just as good a wipe job as the electricity. This erroneous assumption ends up costing the doctor more than just his job.)  
  
Pierce ignores the doctor for now. He crouches down in front of the Soldier, who has finally heaved himself into more of a sitting position and is now leaning heavily against the wall, muscles still twitching periodically and his metal hand squeezing the flesh one in what appears to be an attempt to smother its involuntary spasms. Pierce is pleased to observe that the Soldier has continued to look at him since the moment he had been commanded to do so. Acting on an order-to-order basis, to the point where he won’t even discontinue one action until he receives his next set of instructions, is the highest setting of the various obedience levels that HYDRA installed in the asset, so at least that part of the programming is still in tact. However, the Soldier’s words, the opinion expressed in them, and the fact that he was even able to come up with an opinion at all, are all deeply troubling signs.

Pierce knows this is a volatile situation that must be handled with utmost care so he adopts a gentle, curious tone when he asks, “What is it that you don’t want to do anymore?”  
  
The Soldier’s brows furl together and he swallows convulsively several times before saying, “I think... I’m hurting people.”  
  
As usual, he stops speaking after that one sentence and waits for Pierce to validate his statement, cowering like a scolded dog expecting to be smacked, but despite his body's submissive posturing, he continues to fix Pierce with a somewhat unnerving stare. Those eyes, normally either vacant and dim or else roaring to life with a deadly laser-like focus, are now wet with pain in a way that Pierce has never seen on the subject before. Perhaps not even on any human being. It’s not the mindless agony of a body being strategically taken apart, nor is it the wretched desperation of a soul without hope. No, this is heavier and far more personal than any of that. A deep, unshakable sadness, thickened by guilt and seasoned with fear.  
  
“What makes you say that?” Pierce finally asks after a bit of an uncomfortable stare-off.  
  
The Soldier looks reluctant to answer in case he says the wrong thing, but eventually he does manage to choke out, “It... It’s just... It’s what you make me do, isn’t it?”  
  
“Your job  _does_  involve the - ah - the  _removal..._  of certain... undesirable elements,” Pierce replies judiciously, “But it’s all just means to an end. There are those who would stop us from creating a perfect world for all of humanity. Would you really deny billions of people the opportunity to live in a world without war, without poverty, just so that a handful of undeserving men can continue to exist and spread their wickedness?”  
  
Despite his expression still being one of confusion and uncertainty, the Soldier shakes his head with considerable conviction, the movement vigorous enough to send a light spray of tiny half-melted ice pellets flinging from his long, damp hair. Pierce can tell that the Soldier is becoming overwhelmed by the barrage of rhetoric he is being subjected to, so he keeps plowing forward without giving the Soldier a chance to keep up, aiming to overload the the asset's systems until they shut down completely.  
  
“You cannot think of what you do as hurting people. Not when you’re helping so many more as a direct result. We may have yet to taste the true sweetness of the fruits of our labor, but that time  _will_  come - sooner than ever now, thanks to you.”  
  
The Soldier makes a vaguely doubtful sound in his throat, but it’s clear that he’s well on his way back to them.  
  
“Do not let the chaos of the human condition distract you from your mission,” Pierce goes on. “This is about the forest, not the trees. The fleet, not the ships. The short-sighted fools who call you a murderer now will be lauding you as a savior to their grandchildren. The judgment of the present may seem unforgiving, but the history books will declare you a hero.”  
  
At these words, the nervousness in the Soldier’s expression melts into a wistful softness and his entire being seems to go slack with wonder.  
  
Pierce smiles placidly, knowing he’s got him exactly where he wants him to be, but decides to take it one step further, just because he can.  
  
“You  _do_  want to be a hero, don’t you?” he coaxes.  
  
With something very close to desperation in his eyes, the Soldier nods.

 

* * *

 

_(there is a darkness in him, they tell him. he already knows this, has walked around with it inside him his entire life, hoping no one would notice, but they spotted it right away. they tell him it is something that must be reined in and controlled, and they are the only ones who can do it. he is broken, they tell him, but it’s okay because they're here now, and they will make it all better._

_he tries to be good, to help them fix him. but everything is a trick or test of some sort and he is always wrong. and not just in the sense that he says the incorrect answer or delivers an inadequate performance, but in a much deeper, much more intrinsic way that reaches all the way down into that darkness he's tried so hard hide. this is how he learns the truth:_ he  _is what is wrong. the problem has been him all along. not his responses or his thoughts or his actions, all of which would have been perfectly fine coming from someone else, but from him, they can never be right because they are contaminated at the very source, the place where the darkness resides. no wonder, then, that he is always fucking up. one cannot weave gold from straw, after all, and not even the most talented musician can coax the perfect melody from an instrument that's hopelessly out of tune._  
_  
the man in the suit tells the people in white to fix him up. he hopes this means taking that darkness out of him like they promised, but all they do is tinker with the wiring of his arm and repair the way the hundreds of metal edges had been grinding into the ropey scarred flesh of his shoulder whenever he moved a certain way.  
  
he cannot stifle the hopeless howl that wrings itself from his throat when he realises that they are done working on him but the wrongness inside him is still there, still wound inextricably around his very being like a carnivorous vine. if they can remove a limb and make it better, then why can't they do the same for something on the inside?  
  
after that, he eyes the metal arm with a distrustful revulsion, hating it, being disgusted by it. it is an abomination. a constant, relentless reminder that he is less than the sum of his parts.)_

 

   

 

> _zero_

The Soldier vanishes during a too-cold spring not long after a US Senator is found dead in the swimming pool of his Florida home, foul play not suspected.  
  
An extensive nation-wide search is launched, but even with all the resources HYDRA have in SHIELD, in the FBI, in various transportation and surveillance agencies and in police departments in every major city in the country, no one is able to spot hide or hair of the Soldier for nearly two weeks.  
  
The staff of Department X, the HYDRA team in charge of the Winter Soldier project, spend most of this time running around like a bunch of chickens with their heads cut off, which is slightly amusing considering their organisation's lofty slogan. But Pierce has little patience for any of them, especially since it appears their panic has less to do with the disappearance of the asset itself and more with the possible repercussions of their incompetence - consequences which range in severity from termination of employment to termination, period.  
  
Pierce’s concerns are a lot more serious. After all, here is the most powerful weapon of the century, and they’ve let it slip out of their hands. Not only is this the longest the asset has gone without being wiped, prepped, frozen, or otherwise maintained, but it is also the longest he’s been left to his own devices in the real world. The latter concern is slightly assuaged by the fact that the Soldier has yet to be found, because if he has been able to maintain a low enough profile that even HYDRA can't find him, then it's likely that he has been able to blend in with the public and not draw any attention to himself. More pressing is the matter of his lack of upkeep. There is no telling how much he has come to remember or what else he may learn out there, both of which could prove disastrous to his programming.  
  
The fact that he had enough autonomy to run off like this in the first place is already indicative of a severe malfunction, the likes of which no one could have predicted. Sure, the weapon has exhibited minor glitches in the past – moments of hesitation, doubt, crises of morality, sometimes even weak attempts at defiance – but in the end, the programming always won out. Pierce is dreadfully curious to find out what exactly it was about this mission that triggered the Soldier into being able to override his conditioning.  
  
He gets the opportunity to find out for himself on the sixteenth day of the Soldier's disappearance, when the phone rings as he’s in the middle of writing his acceptance speech for the Indira Gandhi Peace Prize. He is informed that the asset had been tracked to New York City, where he has apparently holed himself up in an abandoned brownstone in the Park Slope neighbourhood of Brooklyn. Neither side has made any attempt to engage the other – in fact, the Soldier has given no indication that he is even aware of HYDRA’s presence – but nobody wants to risk making a scene, so they send Pierce in to extract the asset quietly.  
  
He lands at LaGuardia in just under an hour and is escorted to his destination by a small security detail. There are another dozen or so undercover agents lingering around the dilapidated house, pretending to be locals. To the untrained eye, they could probably pass as such, but the Soldier should definitely be able to know better. The fact that he does not seems to suggest he is more far gone than they thought.

“Are you sure he’s in there?” Pierce asks one of the agents, surveying the quiet, decrepit building with a doubtful eye.  
  
“He was witnessed entering the building about ninety minutes ago, sir,” the officer replies. “We’ve got eyes on the ground and in the air and no one’s seen him come back out.”  
  
“What state did he appear to be in?”  
  
“Disoriented, mostly. Witnesses say he appeared confused, possibly on drugs. Kept askin’ what year it was, stuff like that.”  
  
“Did he seem hostile?”  
  
“No, sir.”  
  
“Now what about the location. Is there some kind of significance to this area in particular? Perhaps the asset would have memories about this place?”  
  
“Not sure about that one. City records show that in the 1930s this block was just an ordinary residential street, though this particular property used to be part of where a -” the man pauses to pull out a notebook, from which he reads, “-uh, a place called ‘Goldie’s Boxing Gym’ once stood, if that rings any bells to you, sir.”  
  
The name is unfamiliar to Pierce, but he makes a note to look into it, as it is clearly something of significance to the Soldier.  
  
“Well, all right then,” he says, perhaps with a bit too much pep. “Thank you for your help, agent. I’m going in. Maintain a low profile and  _no one_  is to engage unless on my orders, is that clear?”  
  
“Understood, sir.”  
  
In a rare moment of hesitation, Pierce simply stands there, uncertain how to proceed. He’s not sure that anything he learned in the training seminars about how to handle compromised assets can really be applied to this situation. Still, he knows he can’t do anything until he actually locates the Soldier, so at least he knows where to start.  
  
He strides up the crumbling front stairs and knocks on the door. When there is no answer, he nudges it open and slowly steps inside, calmly announcing his presence as he does so. The interior is dark and musty, illuminated only by whatever sunlight has managed to creep past the planks of the boarded-up windows. The open floor layout allows for a relatively unobstructed view right to the other end of the house, but the lack of light makes it hard to really see anything.  
  
There’s no sign that there is anyone else in the room until a shaky voice calls out from behind the stairs.  
  
“W-who’s there?”  
  
Pierce mentally clucks his tongue in disappointment; the Soldier would never give away his position so carelessly like this. Further proof of the breakdown in his programming.

“You know me,” Pierce says calmly as he slowly edges towards the source of the voice.  
  
He finds the Soldier hunched in the corner behind the staircase, dressed in ratty civilian clothes with a black glove concealing his metal hand, his entire body coiled and ready, prepared to bolt at any given moment.  
  
Pierce cannot let that happen.  
  
“What are you doing here, boy?” he asks, voice careful if not slightly condescending, the kind of tone used on a spooked horse.  
  
The Soldier’s features arrange themselves into that all-too-familiar expression of panicked confusion, the one that never leads to anything good, and he stammers, “It- it was the end of the line.”  
  
Pierce frowns. This does not answer the question at all, nor does the sentence seem to reference anything he’s read about in the Soldier’s file.  
  
“On the train,” the Soldier tries to explain, except it doesn’t seem like he really understands it himself. “The driver told me... I had to get off ‘cause we’d reached the end of the line.”  
  
There's something odd about the Soldier's voice and it takes Pierce a second to realise that it's because the Soldier is talking like an actual human being. Not in the flat intonations of a machine or the pathetic bleating of an injured animal. This is probably the closest Pierce will ever come to hearing the voice of Bucky Barnes outside of the old war reels.  
  
He decides to keep the Soldier talking – after all, this is the most lucid they’ve ever seen him, which might not say much, but it presents a unique opportunity to extract important information that might not have been on file, and it’s an opportunity he is going to have to act upon _now_ , because it'll likely be the last one of its kind.

Because after today, Pierce is going to  _personally_  make sure that the Soldier won’t be able to even so much as form a proper sentence for a very, very long time.

Hoping to prompt further conversation, Pierce says, “So, you had to get off the train. Where was that?  
  
“Dallas, Tex-” The Soldier abruptly breaks off and gives Pierce a strange look. “Is... is this a mission report?” he asks, seeming to have momentarily slipped back into his programming.  
  
“Yes,” Pierce replies encouragingly. “I need your full mission report, with as much detail as possible.”  
  
“Oh,” is all the Soldier says. He pauses for a moment, tugging absently on the glove that hides his metal hand, before he adds, “I got on another train. But I was... scared.”  
  
He looks to Pierce nervously, as if expecting to be punished for this confession of weakness. Pierce merely gives him a reassuring nod.  
  
“I don’t know why I was so scared,” the Soldier admits with an embarrassed frown. “I think... I think I just don’t like trains very much.”  
  
Pierce can barely contain a snort. “No, I suppose you wouldn’t... Where did this train take you?”  
  
“To another train.  And then to... New... York...” The Soldier trails off uncertainly, sounding like it's just occurred to him that he has no idea why he chose to come this way.  
  
“So... it took you  _here,_ ” Pierce reiterates.  
  
“This is Brooklyn,” the Soldier declares suddenly. It’s the first statement he’s made that hasn’t also been a bit of a question and he seems stunned by his own certainty.  
  
“Why did you come here to Brooklyn?”  
  
“Did you know the Dodgers are in California now?” the Soldier says distractedly. He looks down at his left hand yet again, but this time he seems to be confused about the glove.  
  
“Yes,” Pierce says, fighting to remain patient. “That happened quite a while ago now.”  
  
“I was on the train, coming here, to New York. I was talking to someone about the Dodgers. They laughed and said I was going the wrong way.”  
  
“So why  _did_  you come this way?” Pierce presses.  
  
“It was the end of the line,” the Soldier says again, and they're back where they started without having learned a thing.

Pierce closes his eyes and rubs his temples in frustration. He no longer has any patience for the Soldier’s lost little child act and just wants to take care of this malfunction once and for all, by attacking it at the source. James Barnes’s sense of self is the one biggest threat to the Winter Soldier’s existence, and evidently the mindwipes have not been nearly thorough enough, seeing as the asset was able to track down his childhood neighbourhood, even if he couldn’t pinpoint what exactly had drawn him here.  
  
It’s the plaintive desperation shining clear in the Soldier’s eyes, the almost childlike confusion of a lost soul so desperate for answers, that gives Pierce the idea.  
  
The Soldier has clearly been able retain some lasting shred of his identity even throughout all the tampering they’ve done with his mind. What if the reason behind this is simply that  _he refused to forget?_   What if all this time they'd thought him broken, there had still been some part of him, buried deep within flesh and muscle and marrow, that doggedly continued to hang on? Maybe they had underestimated the true power of the human will. To put it simply, they couldn’t make him forget because he wanted too much to remember.  
  
Therefore, perhaps the trick would be to embed him with something so awful that he would  _beg_  to have it taken out. Something so horrific and unbearably painful that he would eagerly surrender his entire mind to their machine if he thought it would bring him relief.  
  
And perhaps Pierce knows just the way to go about doing this.  
  
“Come with me,” he says to the Soldier, “And I’ll tell you everything you need to know.”  
  
The look on the Soldier’s face tells Pierce he would have followed him into Hell if someone told him that was where he would find himself.  
  
  
+  
  
  
When they return to the bank vault that serves as their DC safehouse, Pierce sets up the asset’s cell like a sort of mini movie theatre, with a projector at the back of the room casting its silver ghosts onto the opposite wall while the Soldier sits in the chair –  _that_  chair – anxiously awaiting to feel whole again. His utter lack of resistance when they fasten the restraints (“Standard operating procedure,” Pierce explains apologetically) and the way his eyes are glimmering with the first sign of hope that Pierce has ever seen from him almost makes him feel bad about what they’re about to do.  
  
_Almost._  
  
They start with the old WWII propaganda videos. Captain America in all his star-spangled glory making going overseas and getting shot at seem like a surprisingly good idea. Pierce doesn’t pay attention to the film; he’s seen these clips a thousand times. Instead, he keeps his eye trained carefully on the Soldier’s face, watching the shadows and light dance through the fine architecture of his bone structure as his expressions slowly begin to betray his feelings.  
  
“I know him,” the Soldier breathes incredulously after the fourth or fifth little Cap skit.  
  
“Indeed you do,” Pierce says dismissively, and puts on a different reel.  
  
In it, Steve Rogers stands beaming next to Bucky Barnes, their arms carelessly slung across each other’s shoulders, Barnes ducking his head as he laughs at something that can’t be heard from the silent footage. The scene feels strangely intimate after all the scripted, kitschy propaganda videos. Both Rogers and Barnes seem strikingly comfortable and natural even though they know they're being filmed, and this could be because the camera is in the hands of a friend, but the more likely reason is because they are with each other.  Each man's sense of ease seems to be a direct effect of the other's presence, as though they cannot help but to be themselves when they are together.  
  
The Soldier seems unsettled by the entire scene, and tenses whenever the Barnes on screen smiles, apparently jarred by the sight of someone with his face doing something that he no longer knows how to do himself.  
  
“That’s... me?” he asks, voice tiny and disbelieving.  
  
Pierce does not bother replying, gathering from the wetness blooming up in the Soldier’s eyes that he already knows the answer for himself.

Meanwhile, the video’s narrator begins a touching – if not somewhat embellished – recounting of the story of two unlikely friends from Brooklyn, which quickly catches the Soldier's attention.

“That’s not how it happened,” he mumbles, then seems surprised yet again by his own knowledge. “I mean, Steve’s parents died when he was young and so did my dad, but neither of us grew up in an orphanage... Why... Why would they say that we did?”  
  
“The only thing the world loves more than a hero is a hero with a tragic backstory,” Pierce replies, omitting the part about how the only _other_ thing the world loves more than a hero is a fallen one.  
  
“We made a pillow fort once,” the Soldier says, doing that thing again where he does not operate on regulated trains of thought but rather on sudden bombs of memory that drop in without warning or relevance.  
  
“You and Rogers?”  
  
“We were probably past the age where that was an acceptable thing for two boys to do,” the Soldier admits sheepishly, seeming awfully innocent all of a sudden.  
  
Pierce, meanwhile, has to snort a little to keep himself from making a disparaging comment about what other unacceptable things they were probably doing together at the time.  
  
He’s never been one to believe the rumours about those two, the stories he’d hear whispered either with a touch of wishful thinking or sneers of derision, nor had he ever really cared one way or another. But now, he thinks, as he watches the Soldier watching Rogers on the screen, now he just might be able to spot some truth to all that old gossip, and it's a truth with such incredible weight to it that it seems almost insulting that most people only ever saw it as petty grapevine chatter.  
  
Pierce, on the other hand, can see it all now. He sees the Soldier’s eyes big and bright with what Pierce can only describe as love, whether it's platonic or romantic or somewhere in between or somewhere beyond, it's still undeniable what it is. He sees those petal pink lips loose and slightly parted, giving the Soldier the look of someone struck mute with adoration, and his entire face just seems so much younger now that his features aren’t being pulled into their usual tight, threatening lines.  
  
The way the Soldier looks right now, Pierce realises with a start, is strikingly similar to the way the Bucky Barnes on the screen looks whenever Rogers is there with him. Posture noticeably more relaxed, face radiating fondness and devotion, but with a hint of wistful longing he tries to hide tucked away in the creases of his eyes.  Whatever Bucky Barnes felt for Captain America - or rather, for Steve Rogers - continues to exist inside the Soldier today.  
  
It's this realisation that proves to Pierce with absolute certainty that Captain America is the key to breaking the Winter Soldier, for once and for all.   
  
The documentary continues, but somewhere along the way the Soldier becomes oddly unresponsive.  He barely bats an eyelash at the cheesy reenactment of his own death and by the time they get to the part where Captain America puts the plane in the ocean, the Soldier is practically catatonic. It can only be assumed that he had long since withdrawn into himself again, where it is quiet and dead and safe. Then the screen goes dark and the Soldier comes to life again - there's something unnerving about how abruptly he can switch himself on and off - and he looks frantically to Pierce for more answers.  
  
“This... this just doesn’t make  _sense,”_  he says helplessly, hopelessly overwhelmed. “If I’m that man... Then why... How am I here? Aren’t I supposed to be dead?”  
  
“You were too important to die,” is Pierce’s cryptic response. “We saw that in you. So we gave you life. And with that life, you touched hundreds of thousands more.”  
  
“Touched?” the Soldier repeats dubiously.  
  
“Well. In some way or another. Your work for us... It’s going to change the world. Hell, it already has.”  
  
“My work... for  _you_...” the Soldier echoes. “I... work for you? Not... not with those Howling Commando guys? What happened to them?”  
  
Pierce feigns sympathy as he lies, “You were the only Howling Commando to survive the war.”

“So Steve's really dead," the Soldier says quietly.

“Crashing a plane into the Atlantic will do that to a guy,” Pierce replies dryly.

“So Steve's dead and I'm here, working for you now,” the Soldier summarises.  “Who... who  _are_ you?”

This is the moment Pierce has been waiting for like a little kid on Christmas morning.  He can barely mask the cruel satisfaction in his voice when he says with exaggerated nonchalance, “Oh, you might remember us from certain previous... encounters.”

He clicks a button on the projector and the screen before them lights up again, casting HYDRA’s sinister logo across the room.  
  
The Soldier's eyes go wide and he chokes on a strangled gasp, utter horror and pure dread written all over his face. “What—” he manages, before his voice dries up and he has to swallow several times before he can finally force out, “W-what is it that you’re trying to say?”  
  
Pierce merely nods towards the screen, indicating for the Soldier to keep watching.  
  
The skull fades and is replaced by a mosaic of grisly, brutal footage - war, genocide, bombings, hostage-takings, assassinations, massacres. Documents outlining the covert overthrowing of democratically elected heads of state to be replaced by foreign-funded dictators. A video clip of a woman trying to scramble out of a moving car with her husband’s brains spattered across the backseat. Ominous stills of balaclava-clad figures patrolling Building 31 of Munich’s Olympic village. Students and workers being mowed down by the guns of those meant to serve and protect them.   
  
The glint of metal that comes and goes like a trick of the light in the background of many of the scenes does not go unnoticed by the Soldier, who turns to Pierce with pleading eyes glassy with terror, imploring to be told it isn’t true.  
  
“This,” Pierce says with a lofty sweep of his arm towards the horrors continuing to play out on the screen, “Is your work.”  
  
“No,” the Soldier insists in an anguished whisper, shaking his head furiously, “No, that’s not... It’s not  _possible...”_  
  
“Everything your best friend so selflessly gave his life to protect,” Pierce says in a cruelly clear and deliberate voice, “You have spent the past thirty years destroying.”  
  
“No,” the Soldier moans again. “No. No, no, no, no...”  
  
By now, his entire body is fighting the restraints, the lithe lines of his chest and limbs twisting uselessly into grotesque contortions as if trying to put out some invisible flame that’s devouring his skin. His head is not strapped down, allowing him to smash the back of his skull against the chair over and over and over again as his jagged cries of denial degenerate into a low, wordless wail, so inhuman-sounding and so utterly devoid of hope that it actually makes Pierce shudder.  
  
Disturbing audio notwithstanding, Pierce is positively enraptured by the spectacle unravelling before him. It’s not often that you get to witness the absolute total decimation of a human spirit. Sure, Pierce has broken many men and women throughout his illustrious career – the birth of the Winter Soldier being among those successes (or at least,  _now_  it will be a success) – but never before has he pushed it this far, with the ultimate goal being not just the erosion the subject’s will, but their complete erasure from existence.  
  
“What would your dear Captain think of you now, hmm?” Pierce wonders out loud, voice chipper with mockingly exaggerated curiosity. “How do you think he would feel if he found out his sacrifice was for  _nothing_  – all because of  _you.”_  
  
Another inarticulate, agonised howl is wrung from the asset’s throat like blood out of a sodden bandage.  
  
Pierce zeroes in on it like a shark.

“Who do you think he would be more disappointed in?” he continues conversationally, “You, for the  _monster_  you have become; or himself, for having been foolish enough to have believed in you in the first place?”  
  
“Stop,” the Soldier manages to grind out through gritted teeth, again pounding the back of his head against the chair in frustration. “Just... Just shut the fuck up!”

“Cap's just lucky he died before he could see what had become of you. What you had let yourself become. Then again, the betrayal would probably have killed him anyway.”

“Stop... God, please, just-”  
  
“But what about you?” Pierce suddenly barks out harshly, stepping in front of the chair and leaning forward to loom over the Soldier with one hand planted firmly on each armrest as if to trap the subject in place. Of course, the thick straps of leather fastened across the Soldier’s ankles, chest and wrists do more than a good enough job of that, but Pierce’s posturing is all about making very clear the power dynamics that are in play right now.  
  
The Soldier hasn’t yet freed himself from his programming enough to be able to withstand this assertion of dominance and falls quickly back into place, though it’s obvious from his expression that he is ashamed and angered by how easily he gave in. His body stops its fruitless struggling and he seems to shrink into himself, probably wishing he could disappear entirely. After all, they treat him as though he is nothing, so it seems only fair that they finally allow him to actually  _be_ nothing, but if there's one thing that HYDRA is known for even less than fairness, it's mercy.

“What about you?” Pierce repeats, still almost face-to-face with the Soldier, but this time his voice is a smooth venomous velvet as opposed to the impatient brusqueness of before. “How does it make _you_ feel, to learn that you have been nothing but a mindless attack dog for the very organisation you vowed to bring down, the one that goes against everything you and your dear Captain Rogers stood for?”  
  
“Shut up!” the Soldier cries out again, surging forward as much as the restraints will allow in what appears to be an attempt to headbutt Pierce in the face.  
  
All Pierce has to do to avoid being struck is back away by less than a foot. He does this in a single fluid movement, letting out a patronizing laugh, like he finds the Soldier’s efforts so pathetic that they’re almost endearing, similar to a kitten that won’t stop trying to catch a laser dot on a wall.  
  
“So now what?” the Soldier snarls, sounding a bit breathless but surprisingly assertive.  
  
Pierce steps away from the chair entirely, stands up straight, and says, “What do you mean, ‘now what?’”  
  
“You told me all this. So, now what? You gonna kill me, is that it?”  
  
Ignoring how that last sentence came out sounding dangerously close to a plea, Pierce shakes his head with another condescending smile. “Kill you? Now, why would we ever want to do a thing like that?”  
  
“Because... you told me everything,” the Soldier says uncertainly, starting to look a little nervous as he realises he doesn’t have the situation assessed as well he thought he did. “Don’t I... I know too much now, don’t I?”  
  
“Oh, but you won’t for long.”  
  
The Soldier blinks at him a few times before a grim realization settles on his features like volcanic ash, dusting the colour from his face. He takes a moment to observe his surroundings – the imposing cell walls, the sickly lighting from a single naked, flickering bulb, the chair he’s fastened to and the contraption next to his temples that make him feel like his head is in a bear trap that could snap shut at any second. For once, he exhibits none of the panicked confusion of someone who does not know where they are or how they ended up there. He stares down at the chair he’s sitting in for what feels like a very long time before he finally lifts his head and looks back to Pierce.  
  
“You can make me forget,” he states in a lifeless tone that’s somewhere between a question and a demand.  
  
Pierce nods.  
  
“Then do it.”

The request is so shocking that even Pierce can’t maintain his usual cool pokerface. Certainly it can’t be  _this_  easy, he muses to himself. Except it totally is, and to think, that HYDRA had spent so much time and effort wrestling to control the asset as though it possessed some unique superhuman power they didn’t know how to overcome, when all along the true source of the Soldier’s seemingly indomitable strength lay paradoxically in his own very simple, very human weakness.  
  
But now is not the time for Pierce to ruminate on this discovery. Now, it's the time to put what he has learned to good use. He sends for a couple of doctors, who arrive on the scene shortly thereafter.  
  
“Our friend here needs another little spa treatment,” Pierce tells them matter-of-factedly, as though what he's requesting really  _is_  something as pleasant as a spa treatment. “But this time, make sure to go all the way.”  
  
The doctors exchange nervous glances before one says meekly, “Sir... That much electricity... It could— ”  
  
“Will it kill him?”  
  
“Well, no... But—”  
  
“Then do it.”  
  
Without giving the doctor another chance to protest, Pierce turns to the Soldier with a raised eyebrow and says cheerily, “Still sure about this?”  
  
(The question is obviously nothing more than a taunting formality because it’s not like the Soldier has any say in this whatsoever, but Pierce thought it might still be nice to at least  _ask_.)  
  
The Soldier’s breathing has become deep and focused in a way that’s definitely too steady to truly be calm; it’s more like concentrating so intensely on each inhalation and exhalation is the only thing keeping him from coming apart at the seams in the most violent and irreparable way.  
  
He closes his eyes, breathes like this several more times, then says, “Do it.”  
  
Pierce deliberately hesitates, curious to see just how desperate the Soldier really is.  
  
Quite desperate, is the conclusion Pierce comes to when the Soldier attempts to throw his whole weight against the restraints and screams at him, “Just  _do it!”_  
  
The words shatter in his throat and he has started to shake now, eyes clenched tightly shut and every muscle rigid as his body braces itself for the pain it knows is coming.  
  
Pierce watches as the Soldier parts his lips to take the biteguard without even opening his eyes, then he smiles the smallest, most satisfied of smiles and quietly slips out of the room before the screaming starts.

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

_(they wipe him so deeply and thoroughly that he operates without incident for another fifteen years, until one fateful afternoon on a highway overpass in washington, d.c., when he fights a shield-wielding man who seems to mistake him for someone else.)_

 

 

 

 

 

 

**_end._ **


End file.
